The Mountain
by Compass Indigo
Summary: His heartbeat was no longer a comforting rhythm; it was a timer, a countdown to the moment when he could hold on no longer, and her forked-tongue tail could not bring light to him, a sundial in the midnight hour. Three-shot.
1. The Mountain

The Mountain

_Tha-thump… tha-thump…_

Espeon sat beside her master, her mind wandering as the snowstorm outside the shelter of their small cave shrieked and howled. If she strained her elegant, delicate ears, she could hear his strong heartbeat, the pulse that made him as firm and unyielding and implacable as life itself. His beating was in perfect rhythm, a counting timer of his breath, his thoughts and deliberate movements that wasted nothing. She had always respected him for his actions, his moral compass and his heartbeat, so much more potent and well-defined in comparison to so many others of his kind, ever since that first moment when she had hatched into his warm arms and gazed into his stoic brown eyes with her amethyst ones. She knew he was worth her respect, even when her fluffy brown and cream fur and miniscule stature had twisted and warped into the elegant curves of an espeon, her tail splitting at the tip to gauge the different paths and her form growing sleek and lavender. For weeks she had been haughty and arrogant, no longer the weakest of the team; she had let the others know so well she refused to be looked down upon. Still, though, he had held her respect, and aye, even her love.

_Heartbeats…_

And yet…the young man lying slumped against the frigid cavern wall beside her was little more than a heartbeat, the fires in his earthen eyes dimmed to little more than the coals of a night's campfire caught in the morning light. His lips were a thin, unbreakable line; the brief smiles that had often flashed across them having surrendered to the gloom and depression that held him tightly in crushing fingers. His hands, callous and scarred, gentle and dexterous, lay limp at his sides, one wrapped around the yellow and brown form of his pikachu; his hands held the lives of his six Pokémon, herself included, and had given each of them a purpose, a meaning. Those hands had taught them to be strong for those that were not, to assist those in need, to crush evil mercilessly simply through the smallest twitch of a finger. His hands spoke for him, and imparted so much to them without a single wasted lesson.

The blaze of his eyes was gone, the purpose in his hands was gone, and his smiles... She took a deep breath, feeling the cold, dry air cut into her moist throat and lungs like a scyther's blades. Espeon couldn't remember the last time she had caught him smiling, smiling as the sun smiled upon the earth. He was a man in twilight, the sun falling away and the shadows around him lengthening with each moment, the last vestiges of the warm rays promising eternal darkness. He was the upper half of a broken hourglass, forever leaking sand; he was a sundial in the night hours. Her master was the one that had sought challenges, always seeking to better himself and his Pokémon, seeking to be the best that ever was. Having reached that goal, he was without purpose. The red and white spheres latched around his worn leather belt held nothing but souls of friends now. They held the epitome of strength and cunning, the greatest fighters in the known world.

What is a warrior with nothing to battle? What point was there to the struggles of the past, to the loss of loved ones-he had lost many, so many-and friends, to the fight for meaning, when at the end there was naught but an empty shell and a heartbeat?

_Tha-thump… tha-thump…_

She closed her eyes, pressing her muzzle and warm fur against the bare skin of his arm, and was unperturbed when his eyes gave no indication of her affectionate gesture, merely staring ahead into the frozen shadows of their cave. On his other side, Pikachu shifted slightly, his black eyes briefly meeting her own.

The espeon had rarely conversed with Pikachu, preferring to watch him at a distance. His eyes were like their master's eyes, piercing and brown, seeing into her very soul even as they gazed at the world with an otherworldly stare. The pikachu was the oldest of the team, and still his eyes spoke of an age far beyond their comprehension, of sights and sorrows and joys that were private to him and their master.

It was with those eyes that he glanced at her, and a shiver raced through her. It was not from the cold.

Espeon averted her eyes, swiftly focusing her attention on her forked-tongue of a tail, which she had curled around herself out of habit, sighing. It had been a few days since she had last looked into the coming times, and now would prove as apt a time as any. At the split near its tip where ethereal and temporal energies surged and ebbed, the lines of her fur flowed into other glowing lines and braiding together at each tip. The unfocused power was sharpened upon reaching her tail's ends, blurry timelines and possibilities coming into her sight for a brief moment, and then lancing and fraying into the future. Each end held a different future, and each had always kept its promise, when it came to pass.

Deliberately taking a slow breath and closing her eyes, she concentrated on the rhythm of her master's heart, sucking in a deeper lungful of air for every few heartbeats, gradually extending the period until her body was calm and rarely moved, save for a breath every minute, two minutes, three. She descended into the shimmering calm of her mind, seeking out distractions and thrusting them away; the cold no longer bothered her, concern for her master was replaced with momentary indifference, fear of what she might see overtaken by feline curiosity. When she opened her eyes, the silent cave about her was disappeared, the bitter air gone, the warmth and security of her master's presence faded.

In their places was an infinite field of golden wheat and bright sunlight, blinding white clouds hovering still in the windless sky. She breathed, more of habit than of necessity, and took in the scent of a forever summer and the unending wheat fields. Her mind was at ease here, in this constructed mental plane.

Espeon rose to her dainty feet, flicking her tail as she strolled into the rich grasses; a feeling of security and warm familiarity rose within her as her vision was enveloped by the golden stalks, and the sun above beat down upon her fur with a lazy heat. Curling up in the encompassing wheat, she closed her eyes to her internal world, the bright sun disappearing instantly, not even filtering through her eyelids as she sank into the earth and vanished from sight. A mild breeze blew across the golden fields, the stalks of the grass waving in time with the wind, and carried away the heat of the midday sun.

In the deepest recesses of her mind, in the murk of the subconscious and beyond the harsh laughter of second thoughts, and third thoughts, and hindsight, there was an abyss. Here Espeon now stood, and she could see nothing but for two pillars of light, twin towers spearing infinitely into the darkness above and below. They were the two paths of her tail.

Approaching the closest of dual timelines, she raised a forepaw to press against the luminescent surface, then hesitated, her paw halting a hairsbreadth from the temporal path. Doubts shook through her, fear and anger and pain slashing into her heart and causing it to grow fleshy arms of muscle and sinew that reached up to her throat and constricted tightly. With a soft cry, she thrust her paw forward, and a flood of information and possibilities surged against her mental barriers, the shields protecting her from the chaos outside the boundaries of time being hammered upon. Sorrow, pain, anger, loss, depression, denial, disgust, and emptiness swamped her, and images raced through her head as she was swallowed up by the storm of what might be.

* * *

><p>…<em>and then Espeon was once again in the cave beyond her mind, watching her own body resting impassively with the rest of the team. They were all outside the confines of their pokéballs; Pikachu, of course, Charizard, Blastoise, Venasaur, Umbreon, even Snorlax all stood around the still form of their trainer. For a moment, her mind froze, even in the midst of the vision. Was he…?<em>

_Her master rose to his feet from his place against the cave wall, and robes of imperial purple rested upon his shoulders, instead of the clothing he normally wore, that had long been torn to tatters by the howling winds of Mount Silver, his cap was a laurel crown upon his head. His brown eyes were calm and alive with a purpose, and his lips flickered into a grim smile. He was a broken man with a purpose. _

_Ignoring the hopeful looks of the Pokémon surrounding him, he reached to his belt, retrieving their Pokéballs one by one, until he held each in the palm of his left hand. Expanding one, he returned Charizard, who protested with a rumbling growl, then Venasaur and Blastoise, Snorlax, Umbreon and herself, until he stood alone in the cavern but for Pikachu._

_Their eyes locked for an instant that seemed an eternity, before their master knelt down, caressing his first Pokémon's red cheek fondly. A glittering drop fell from his eyes, while another fell from Pikachu's._

"_I am sorry," he murmured, and Pikachu's protesting cry was cut off as he was drawn into his pokéball in a beam of crimson light. Reverently placing each of their seven technical prisons on the ground where he had lain for days, Red trudged from the frosty cave and into the biting gale of Mount Silver's peak._

_Stumbling in the wind that he had stood so proudly against before, he made his way to the cliff-edge, staring out over the land of Kanto, at the bright clouds and shimmering cities on the horizon. Holding his arms wide, he leaned forward, and the peak of Mount Silver was empty once more._

_In the cavern, seven souls were encased by steel; five were awash with confusion and concern, one was sillent and contemplative, and one was resigned to the world and heartbroken._

_The shadows in the cave grew smaller as an hour passed, light bursting through the cavern's entrance, and then a human figure stepped into the light, casting a long shadow which ended at the pile of six pokéballs. The young man, a trainer, stepped forward, followed by the fierce form of a typhlosion, the Pokémon's fire-vents casting a scorching light in the dim cave. The boy approached and kneeled at the pile of red and white orbs, slowly lifting the icy steel of the sphere containing Pikachu in both hands. His posture downcast, he placed Pikachu's ball within his backpack, then did the same with the rest, and silently walked out into cold._

_More time passed, and the shadows lengthened and grew darker, the wind picking up and black clouds rolled in, stealing away the last vestiges of sunlight from the boy…._

_Halfway down the mountainside, he was curled up in the meager shelter of a small overhang of ice, clinging to the ailing typhlosion for warmth as the wind shrieked and bit at their every exposed piece of flesh. The trainer's eyes were closed, the melted water of snowflakes that had landed on the hot skin of his eyelids refreezing, ice crystals forming on his eyelashes and keeping them shut. Every few seconds his eyelids would twitch, as though he was trying to open them but had not the strength to do so. The typhlosion whimpered weakly, and the mountain stole the boy's life away. Outside the tiny overhang, a graceful and terrible form floated, and raised its luminescent blue gaze from the pair before it, focusing on the mountain's peak._

"_I am the mountain."_

* * *

><p>With a torturous jolt, Espeon was flung screaming from the timeline, landing painfully on her side. Tears of anguish streamed down her face even as she wept with relief at the joy of being freed from the vision. Lying there, paralyzed as her mind sorted and adjusted to the vast influx of the future, she realized just how different the path had been, focusing her thoughts on the emotional shocks that had pierced her before she had even entered the timeline.<p>

Gradually, Espeon felt feeling return to her limbs; shakily, she struggled to her feet, her chest heaving in deep, shuddering breathes, thoughts swirling in a vast hurricane. The boy had died, and then her master had died, leaving them…. Were they connected? Was her master's life, his beating heart, tied to that of the boy on the mountain? She shook her head, banishing the thousands of questions bombarding her to the back of her mind; she would worry about them later.

Staring into the radiance of the second timeline, she wondered what pain it might have in store, or perhaps some possibility to circumvent the deaths of the two young humans. Steeling her resolve, she walked past the first timeline, almost cringing away as she felt a mild pang of emotion arc towards her in an electric bolt.

Her pulse quickened as she neared the second pillar, and her labored breathing seemed to resonate around the dark space. Her whiskers twitched anxiously as she paused before the timeline, feeling no strange outpouring of emotion emanating from it, despite her close proximity. Closing her eyes tightly, she dove headfirst into the timeline.

* * *

><p><em>At the mountain's peak, in the cave Espeon knew so well, her master slept, his eyes shifting rapidly beneath his eyelids, and low murmurs of protest and sorrow escaped his lips as he tossed and turned, caught in the midst of a vivid nightmare. Around his unsettled figure, the towering forms of his impressive team watched over him. Their eyes were closed, and their chests heaved slowly in the grip of slumber, and the flickering light of Charizard's tail-flame made them all the more intimidating. They were Red's brooding guardians in his despair, his friends. But there were only six forms present around her master. Espeon's future self was not there.<em>

_Suddenly, her point of view shifted, and she was dragged out of the cave, and drawn down the mountain, blurs of snow and stone and a flash of purple fur passing by underneath her to before coming to an abrupt halt next to a familiar young man, the trainer from the first vision._

_The trainer was struggling against the vicious wind and snow, his arms shielding his face and eyes from the worst of the cold. His typhlosion stood in front him, roaring at the storm and melting a path in the drifts of ice-coated snow with the searing heat of his flamethrower. The flames of his back vents were intense, the wind adding oxygen to the excess of combustive materials and causing them to hiss and burn the sharp blue of a blowtorch. The air around them was so thick with snow and ice that without the blazing Volcano Pokémon's flames, both he and his trainer would have been lost to Espeon's sight amidst the obscuring snow.._

_In the dark of the storm, just beyond the companions' field of vision, the figure watched with implacable blue eyes, and gestured with a delicate hand. The wind coiled and hissed, screaming as it was forced against the warm bodies before it, carrying a deadly payload of ice._

"_I am the ice."_

_Icy shards like glass were flying against them now, sharp edges slicing shallow cuts in the pair that leaked hot blood for an instant before freezing shut. Each shard rarely missed, and soon the two were covered with lacerations and droplets of crimson life stained the snow red._

"_Typhlosion, we have to take shelter from this storm! There's no way we can reach the peak today," the trainer shouted, all the might of his lungs desperately trying to be heard over the howls of the wind._

_The beast of fire nodded, squaring his shoulders as he prepared to melt a hole in a nearby snow drift, hopefully deep enough to give them refuge from the murderous weather. Suddenly, a beam of purple light lanced overhead, and the wail of the storm rose to a fever pitch. Arcs of purple and blue and almost black radiance burst around them, screams of the wind rising and falling. _

_Typhlosion growled defensively and knocked his trainer to the ground as a coruscating violet orb blazed a path through the air where his head had been. Closing his eyes tightly, the typhlosion positioned himself over his trainer as a shield, while the battling lances and spheres and shrieks ripped the world around them asunder. Explosions of snow were caught midair by the cerulean and violet light, frozen for a brief instant and then plummeting to the ground as time caught up. Minutes passed while the multicolor radiances soared and hissed, but finally the lights subsided, the wind fell and diminished to a low gust, and after a few minutes of tensely listening for the sound of a possible threat, for anything, Typhlosion let his disgruntled trainer stand._

"_You could've at least let me watch," the young man grumbled, his face a mask of exaggerated irritation. "That might have been some Pokémon we haven't seen yet! Oh well," The teenager glanced up at the sky. "At least the storm seems to have passed. Maybe we'll make the peak today after all."_

_The young man grinned, scratching that one spot on his typhlosion's neck that the Pokémon loved so much. Rumbling in pleasure, the Pokémon nuzzled his trainer, and then resumed burning a path through the snow-covered trail. Heat surged around them, warping the air in waves, as the two continued onward toward the mountaintop, not hearing the slowing heartbeats of a savior nearby._

* * *

><p>Espeon anticipated her ejection from the timeline this time, redirecting her mental body's forceful discharge upwards, out of her roiling subconscious, through the soil of her mental plane, which was being lashed by the massive coils of a hurricane, and into the real world. She ignored the turmoil of her mind, ignored the painful wires twisting tighter around her heart. She felt only the need to flee from the depths of herself.<p>

The mist of her most recent exhalation was dissipating before her muzzle as Espeon's eyes snapped open, wide and unfocused. For an instant, panic rushed through her, the icy tension of fight or flight trickling along her spinal column, and the knowledge that she simply had to get away was foremost in her mind as she leapt to her feet, teeth bared. For what seemed like hours, she was still, caught up in the tidal wave of emotions that were bound to follow gazing into the timelines. The feelings began to pass, the tension flowing out of her body and draining into the floor. She knew who she was.

Her master was asleep, if the nightmare-ridden rest he had taken to over the past month since their arrival at Mount Silver could be called sleep. She clambered into his lap, curling up into an exhausted ball of fur, and closing her eyes in the hope of dreamless sleep.

By morning, her tears will have dried, and her resolve will have become steeled for what must be done.

.

Author's Note: This is part one of a two-shot I spontaneously came up with. I acknowledge that the foreshadowing is heavy, and that it's fairly obvious what will happen. Even so, I enjoyed writing it, and hope you will enjoy reading part two just as much as part one. :)


	2. The Ice

The Ice

Espeon drifted into the waking world gradually at first, the heat of her curled body and insulating fur that kept the cold at bay impeding her normally swift transition into awareness. The comfortable warmth was almost like hiding under the thick blankets of a Pokémon Center's bed, sluggishly dozing the hours, years, eternities away on the wondrous brink between the perceptive mental state and the dream-locked mind where every nonsensical happening has an understandable reason.

Then she felt something pulse around her, a brief flash of electric blue and a wave of soul-freezing water drenching her mind, sending her subconscious into alert, and speeding her to full awareness with the smooth ease of a fighting Pokémon waking on the battlefield.

Immediately, the rapture of the bizarre and familiar world of color-tasting dreams began to bleed away, and the crisp, stagnant air of the frosted cavern slithered into her lungs, chilling her throat and sinking icicles into the sleepy fog. Registering the cold and the threatening pulse of energy, her sleep-encrusted mental gears and cogs swiftly spun up, the low whine of psychic power at the back of her mind rising to a crescendo before passing into a range beyond her own abilities to detect. Her eyelids flicked open, instincts processing the sight before her, evaluating threats, seeking safety, and then signaling the all-clear to her coiled muscles, all before her higher mental functions could comprehend her surroundings.

The cave was utterly bare, with the exception of her master and Pikachu; there was no sign of what had startled her into wakefulness.

Cautiously descending from her place in her trainer's lap, Espeon sat still, pondering the previous night's visions. Both had indicated a grave outcome, and for several minutes she was paralyzed by fear, for herself and her master, before she gained enough self-control to force the emotion into a dark place within her mind. She couldn't allow anything but the future to be at the forefront of her focus; distractions might cost everything… the one person she held dear.

Shaking her head, eyes tightly closed, she contemplated the possibilities at hand. The first timeline had revealed a future where her master… where her master fell, and the boy that must be down the mountain had retrieved his team, herself included, before dying at the hands of an unfamiliar figure. The latter was similar in its exposition, with the entire team assembled around their master, but asleep, and her master had… no… not fallen, jumped. He had not jumped! There had been a battle of lights, between a flash of purple fur and a lurid monster as terrible and unyielding as the icy mountain itself, and the trainer with the typlosion had continued on up the mountain, and… and….

Her eyes opened. She knew what was necessary.

Padding over to the cave's gaping maw, she gazed at the faint glow reflecting off the snow just outside, and at the cloud-filled sky that was already beginning to leak snowflakes and ice. With a reference to her internal clock, she determined it was around 5:00 AM. She had time, then.

Returning to her master's side, she cautiously pawed at his belt, knocking the latched pokéballs to the stony floor, one by one; she kept a wary eye trained on his face should he wake up. Fortune was on her side, however, and he did not stir further than the unintelligible mumbles and shifting of a dreaming man.

Lightly tapping the release button of Charizard's ball, she siphoned a small amount of psychic energy into her forehead gem, which began to radiate dully with a ruby glow. The dragon materialized in a burst of crimson, his fanged maw gaping wide to roar a challenge to some anticipated challenger… only to snap shut with a tooth-jarring clack as Espeon held it closed by applying a minor telekinetic burst, turning what would have been a magnificent and intimidating roar into little more than a strangled cough. His eyes burned with fury as he looked down at her, a growl of displeasure rumbling through his throat as his tail-flame brightened in an obvious threat.

Unperturbed by the charizard's rightful irritation, she hissed up at him, gesturing at their slumbering master with her tail as she said, "Be silent! He needs his rest, and you would have woken him had I not shut you up! Now, if I let go, will you stay quiet?"

He glowered at her balefully, and then nodded reluctantly, making no sound when she released his jaws from her psychic hold.

Turning her attention to the other pokéballs, she freed Venasaur, Blastoise, and Snorlax repeating her silencing technique with each. …Though she discovered that it was entirely unnecessary for Snorlax, as the gargantuan Pokémon was still sleeping deeply when she let him from his ball. Umbreon, due to his being Dark-type, would have to be kept quiet some other way.

Deciding to leave him for last, Espeon approached the tranquil yellow form of Pikachu, pausing for a moment to gaze at the rodent's relaxed posture, the unhurried rise and fall of his chest as his lungs filled and emptied, pulling in vital oxygen and releasing waste carbon dioxide. Her eyes wandered across his face, his calm expression lending her the sense of one tired finally reaching a place of rest. The flash mouse's muscles were not tensed and set for battle, but loose and ready only for sleep, and for dreams

Gently prodding him in the side, she almost slipped a psychic grip around his jaws, before hesitantly deeming it unnecessary. Pikachu rarely spoke to anyone, these days. Let alone her.

His eyes flickered, slid open, and his muscles tensed, the intervals between his breaths accelerating. He glanced around, impaling the espeon with a questioning look, then examined the gaunt, resting face of their trainer. With a small sigh, he lightly leapt out of their master's lap and onto the rocky ground. His head cocked to one side and ears twitching, he looked at her for an explanation of the entire team being awake. She replied by addressing the entire group in a whisper, "Give me one moment. I'll explain after I let Umbreon out."

Nudging the release button of Umbreon's ball with the moist tip of her nose, she immediately pounced onto the materializing form of the other 'Eon, endeavoring to keep his mouth shut while explaining that he had to stay silent. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly, in hindsight), Umbreon believed himself to be under attack, and struggled franticly, ignoring Espeon's hissed explanations, and yowling for help. For a moment, it seemed that their master would awaken due to the commotion the two 'Eons were causing…. That is, until Venasaur extended a powerful vine to encircle the umbreon's muzzle and drag Espeon out of his reach.

Despite having his mouth fastened tight by the Grass-type powerhouse's vine, Umbreon was still a ferocious sight, his crimson scleras glinting as he glared first at Espeon, then the venasaur holding his mouth closed. The sharp, sickle-shaped claws at the end of his lithe legs were extended, and the rings spread across his body were fluctuating between a sickly yellow light, and a blinding, near-white tint. Everyone fixed him with their stares, and the silence of heaving breaths reigned.

"Umbreon, calm yourself, and I shall release you" Venasaur spoke at last, splitting the silence asunder with the low thunder of his voice.

Scowling fiercely at each of the other Pokémon in turn, Umbreon nodded, wrenching away when Venasaur loosened his toughened vine from around his muzzle. "Bastards," he spat, tone brimming with malice. Umbreon in one of his more cheerful moods, all things considered; he was widely regarded as the most ill-tempered Pokémon in their band of seven, more so even than Charizard.

It was hardly a surprise, considering the circumstances of his joining their group; following Blue's departure from the livelyhood of a trainer to go work in his grandfather's lab, he had released nearly all of his Pokémon, with Umbreon being the sole exception. Eventually, however, Blue had become so engrossed in his research that he rarely returned to his house, let alone paid any mind to his last Pokémon. When Red had arrived in Pallet Town visiting family, he'd stopped by his former rival's home, only to discover a weakened Umbreon and a thin layer of dust coating nearly every surface. Storming into Blue's lab, he'd immediately launched into a tense discussion with the professor, which eventually culminated in his gaining guardianship over the Umbreon. Aquiring a license that allowed him to carry seven Pokémon at a time, so long as one was a registered noncombatant (Umbreon, in this case), Red had then proceeded on a long and arduous journey to the peak of Mount Silver. During this weeks-long expedition, Umbreon had gradually warmed to his new comrades, though he still held a seed of fury within his heart for Blue, and that seed often surfaced at the slightest provocation.

Espeon sighed quietly and averted her gaze from the dark 'Eon and annoyed companions, unsurprised by their foul mood; her method of rousing them had not been the most kind, true, but the more accurate reason for their tempers was the state of their master. All of them were anxious and concerned for his wellbeing, especially considering that he had not eaten in days, and rarely strayed more than a few yards from the cave. His features were gaunt and pale, and his sleep had been restless and sparse.

"Well?"

The espeon started, returning from her thoughts to find Blastoise looking down at her, the immense turtle locking the water cannons at his shoulders into place with a sharp clack to gain her attention further. He gruffly repeated the question.

"I have to leave here for a while… and…" For a moment, the espeon faltered, her smooth voice trailing off as she reflected on her visions. Her voice hardened, and she continued. "I want you to keep him safe, if only for a few hours. I ought to be back after… after that."

Espeon looked over at their master, then at the six Pokémon before her, the only people in the world she would be willing to name as her family. They were veterans, rough and battle-scarred, with hard eyes and muscles like steel, bound together by the vocal hands of Red, their leader and master, trainer and friend. They were comrades that shared the blood in their veins, the compass in their hearts; their hearts beat in perfect synchronization with each other.

Blastoise's heartbeats boomed within the solid confines of his impenetrable shell, each thunderous pulse reverberating and echoing against his bony plate armor, which had shielded both himself and the fallen forms of his comrades when all seemed lost to the Rocket Gang.

Charizard's hot blood was pumped through his veins with the force of a steaming geyser, his heart rumbling almost continuously, as though a volcano were about to explode within his chest, threatening to sear the flesh of enemies and allies alike with its fury.

Venasaur's heart crept along between each hammering beat, like the slow but implacable growth of some vascular titan, each thump cradled within his tank-like rib cage signaling the birth of a new ring in the timber stem of his spinal flower.

Umbreon's lifeblood flowed smooth and swift throughout his limbs and bloody eyes, eternally surging within the darkness of his arteries and veins, pulsing thick and vital, and giving him the strength he so longed for as an eevee: the strength to avenge... and to protect, even though he was loath to reveal it.

Snorlax's heart boomed like the clock tower inLavenderTown, a great bell tolling the hours of rest to the world, his half-ton heart supporting the massive body around it, a body that so often served as a massive pillow for friends and exhausted allies.

Pikachu's heartbeat was small and quick, like the pitter-pattering of rodent feet alongside the sure footsteps of a brother, an equal; his heart pounded like the muted thunder of a distant storm, like the pulse heard in a father's chest when the storm overhead terrified a child enough to cling tighter.

Espeon smiled softly. Yes, they would keep Red safe. It was her duty to safeguard _them all_.

Pikachu stepped forward, opening his mouth to speak, but held in his words when the espeon raised a delicate paw, then stared into his eyes, his brown eyes, full of trepidation and curiosity. Her pupils flashed, and the electric mouse slumped to the floor, eyelids drooping as the Hypnosis took effect, luring him into a fitful sleep.

Not waiting for another heartbeat, she expanded her psychic awareness, reaching out towards Venasaur's massive flower and seizing hold of the powder lining its inner petals, the dust the sandman used to ease restless humans into slumber. She then grasped the stagnant, frigid air of the cavern, spinning it around and caging her friends in a circle of quietly whirling air currents, into which she siphoned the tranquilizing powder. She clamped down on their vocal chords, preventing them from alerting their master, and ignored their wide, uncomprehending eyes. Within moments, they were all embraced by the gentle pull of sleep.

Espeon wait for a few minutes, allowing time for the sleep powder to settle before she padded past her dormant companions to her master's still form. Climbing gracefully into his lap, she affectionately licked him on the nose, and nudged his worn cap from his head, spilling his tousled black hair. Pressing her cool gem against the pale skin his forehead, her eyes fell closed. Inside the boundaries of her mind, she called her happiest thoughts, her most joyful moments, her pride and respect and understanding of the world around her. She called forth her memories of training to be the best, to be just, to represent the most skilled trainer in the entire world. She called the memories and emotions, and they came, flocking to her mental banner; she replicated them, copying the essence of every blissful heartbeat and smile she had witnessed, and molded the silvery strands into a sphere, which she then grasped with the fork in her tail.

Concentrating, the benevolent espeon lowered her mental barriers slightly, just barely enough for her to weave a psychic bridge between herself and the mind of her master, whose inner turmoil and lurid nightmares were spilling against her shields and breaking like tidal waves against rocky cliffs, spectral claws and gnashing teeth screeching against her internal defenses. Even so, the negative energies radiating from her master's brain were strangely potent for a human's relatively weak psychic threshold...

Whispering a prayer to Mew, to Arceus, to Cresselia, to any other deity of the Psychic-types, Espeon hurled the silver orb of smiles and laughter across the bridge, molding it into a focused spear of empathy and care that lanced deep into the roiling black mists and shrieking past memories of her master's sleeping mind. The luminescent javelin pierced the mist with little struggle, and was soon gone from the edges of her perception, and in the depths of her master's fogbank of nightmare, she glimpsed a supernova of mercurial webs spreading through her master's mind like wildfire.

She smiled. Perhaps he could have a sweet dream for once, while she was gone.

And then, the mesh of silver stopped, beads of ebony liquid affixed to each strand like dew on a spinarak's web in the morning. Bulky bars of electric blue slammed through the delicate constructs, crushing many of the fragile strands and snapping others; vicious wires slithered out of the abyss of his subconscious, coiling around the silver and dragging it into the deep. The boiling miasma crept back, obscuring Espeon's view into the maleficent coils and crackling bars.

Fury welled inside the psychic 'Eon, a stream of molten hatred siphoning into her will, solidifying it and renewing her determination to carry the future she desired forth into reality. This nightmare, the dreams of horror and loss that had plagued Red ever since they had first arrived upon the mountain, the depression which had caught him so tightly… it was all the work of a ghost. An ectoplasmic being that was the mountain and the ice, that despised the heat of the living, but bore a far greater hatred for the beating heart of a human, a human too well-protected by his loyal comrades to be frozen outright, too determined and with a deeply seated belief in right and wrong to be possessed and forced to die by his own hand. Nightmares and depression had to make due instead, to slink into his soul and chill it into nothing but a shell and a heartbeat, with no will to live anymore.

Her master was in pain during every sleeping moment, she realized, and for a split instant was tempted to wake him, to save him from the nightmare gnawing on his sanity. But then she recognized the action already laid down for her in the timeline, the only way to keep him alive…. He was too close to the edge now, and wakefulness could very well seal his fate. He had to stay asleep, with the pain.

A tear rolled down Espeon's cheek as she thrust a psychically armored tendril deep into his mind, ignoring the sharp impacts of the Nightmare against her defenses, reaching into his subconscious, tapping into the portion of his brain that controlled his sleep. Twisting her mental lance, she manipulated him, twitching nerve endings and brain cells and synapses and so many other things, all to make him sleep, and writhe in pain so that he might live.

Retreating from her dance with his mind, she rested in his lap for a moment, leaning against his bony chest as tears of righteous wrath and earnest sorrow and regret blazed trails down her muzzle, the droplets that fell from her face freezing and crystallizing and forming tiny snowflakes of individuality, crafted by an innate psychic field she didn't know she possessed.

Eventually, she rose, slipping off of his lap the stand in the midst of her dormant companions, her family. Pressing her gem to each of their foreheads in turn, she gifted them with mercurial spheres, sweet dreams of high spirits and contentment. Umbreon was the most difficult for her to endow her gift, as his mental barriers were impossibly strong, Dark-type that he was. She managed though, and soon the sleeping Pokémon at her feet all bore soft smiles of the fondly remembered events in the dreamscapes.

Padding silently to the cavern's dim opening, toward the rising wind and plummeting temperature, the espeon bid her family farewell, lingering in the light to look back at them, committing the image and their peaceful likenesses to her memory for eternity.

Moments later, the entrance to the cave was clear, and the blizzard outside howling like a banshee, as if in delight at a new victim.

.

Author's Note: Well, that's the end of part two! I was working on it earlier, and I realized that I wanted to split it into three parts, instead of my originally planned two. As it is, part two would have gone on for _much_ longer had I not made that decision. I hope you enjoyed it~


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